Fashions in Girls' Names at Smith College

F. WARREN WRIGHT

DURING THE LATI'ER part of my forty-two years of teaching at Smith I had begun to wonder if there were fashions in girls' names as in their dresses. So last summer I started a research, on the sub- ject. I began with a card catalogue of 2,302 of my own students from Smith 1914 to 1956. To get a better statistical base, more indicative of trends, I added samplings from the earlier classes, for a grand total of 3,664. These I arranged by first or given names. Treating different spellings of the same name as different names, I wound up with an astonishingly long alphabetical list of 573. Abbie was first, then Abby, Abigail, Adaline, Addie, Adelaide, Adele, Adra, Adrienne and so on and so on to Xenia, Zecille, Zelda, ZelIa, Zora, and Zulime at the end. The next job was to count occurrences in decades. But since the list had started with my own students, total occurrences would not be adequate statistically: in different classes and decades the num- bers had varied greatly due to curricular changes, course assign- ments, and sabbatical leaves. To allow for these variations, as a fairer basis of comparison, I worked out what I will call "weighted val ues" or points. These values were used in rearranging the names in descending order. I limited this table to names worth at least 100 points, which meant that they occurred at least six or seven times. Ninety-five out of 573 names; Mary at the top and Eva at the bottom.Tabu- lated on the next page are the first 23 names. (The first figure is the order; the second, the weighted value; the third, the number of instances.) Observing that in this group there are variants of the same name, for example, Mary and Marion, Anna and Anne, Jane and Jean, I tried to discover among the 573 names semantically related families. I found a Mary family: Mary, Mae, Maie, Maria, Marie, Marietta,

166 Fashions in Girls' Names at Smith College 167 Marya, Maurine, Maureen, May, Marilyn, Marylin, Marlynn, Marion, Marian, Miriam; an Anna family: Ann, Anna, Anne, Annah, Hannah, Hanna, Aneita, Anita, Annet, Anette, Annie- wall, Nancy, Nina, Nita; a Jane family: Jane, Jean, Joan, Jan, janaan, janet, janice, janis, jeanie, jeanne, jeanette, jennette, jennie, joann, joanne, Joanna (some of these may seem suppositi- tious); and 59 other related groups. The most striking differ- ence between the original list of 573 and the same names arranged

( 1) Mary 3769 255 (13) Marion 785 54 ( 2) Helen 1944 130 (14) Edith 758 47 ( 3) Elizabeth 1889 144 (15) Harriet 757 48 ( 4) Margaret 1167 92 (16) Anna 689 42 ( 5) Alice 1151 77 (17) Virginia 682 53 ( 6) Ruth 1044 73 (18) Anne 621 44 ( 7) Dorothy 872 77 (19) Eleanor 547 41 ( 8) Frances 864 64 (20') Sarah 543 37 ( 9) Flarence 863 55 (21) Jane 538 43 (10) Caroline 837 53 (22) Martha 532 38 (11) Grace 794 51 (23) Jean 530' 42 (12) Barbara 786 72 in these 62 families was the displacement of Alice, Ruth, ~rances, and Florence, by the corning of Anna, Jane, Eleanor, and Katharine into the first ten. After this preliminary work it was possible to study in detail the chronological vicissitudes of the several names during the eight decades of the college's history. The ever popular Mary was over- whelmingly so before 190'0',moderately so in the 30's, least popular in the la's and 5a's. Helen's popularity was highest in the fourth and sixth decades, low since then. Elizabeth was at her height from 1920'-1940. Margaret was a rather minor name until 190'0',reach- ing peaks in the 2a's and 4a's. Alice ranked almost with Mary during the 19aa's, has had a low score, like Helen's of late. Ruth increased in fortune gradually until the third and fourth decades, since then has gradually declined. Dorothy is a late corner: the first example in the third decade; and half of the examples and thirty per cent of the points concentrated in the 2a's. Frances has wavered and recently declined. The vogue of Caroline and Grace 168 F. Warren Wright was largely 19th century. Barbara does not appear until the 1910'S, but in the 1940's is second only to Mary. Marion was at her heights from 1890-1939. Edith was primarily a girl of the Gay Nineties. Harriet was most popular before 1900 but with an appreciable re- vival in the 1930's. Marion, Edith and Harriet are seldom heard of now. Anna came to Smith in largest numbers in the first years of the college, in decreasing numbers since 1900. Her sister Anne, while present in the early days, has been seen in largest numbers since 1930. Ann was unknown prior to 1920, in the 50's there have been more of her than her two sisters combined. Virginia answers the roll-call first in the 90's and then only once; she gains % of her points in 1920-49. Eleanor is an unusual person before 1910, deigning to honor us with % of her appearances in the next thirty years. On the contrary % of Sarah's points were won before 1910. The twins, Jane and Jean, have been most evident since 1930; the late blooming Joan was born in the late 30's, now surpasses them both. Martha has been a girl of generally even popularity. One might go on down the list, but total point values decrease and statistical reliability, ever questionable, vanishes. However, one notes the almost total disappearance of once popular names, such as Ethel, Bertha, Charlotte, Clara, Agnes, Emma, and the sudden rise of Patricia, Lois, Betty, Constance, Priscilla, Marilyn, and Suzanne. Just a word about names ending in ie: 29, Abbie, Addie, Allie, Annie, Bessie, Carrie, to Sadie, Sallie, Sophie, and Willie. The most popular (in descending order) Jessie, Annie, Elsie, Nellie and Carrie. Thirty per cent of the points are to be attributed to the first ten years of the college; and only six per cent to the classes of 1940-56. This confirms an impression that such names, while still occurring, are old-fashioned. Another study might be made of the use of two given names to- gether. Among my own students there were thirteen names thus linked with a following name; nearly 30 combinations with Ann (Anne, etc.) as the second name. Let me give the list with Mary as the first name (a numeral indicates the number of instances): Mary Elizabeth (14), Mary Jane (8), Mary Ann (4), Mary Alice (3), and Mary Francis, Mary Virginia, Mary Emily, and Mary Eleanor (2 each), and Mary combined once with: Lucile, Florence, Marjorie, Lee, Helen, Catherine, Rachel, Lois, Margaret, Caroline, Jean, Frances, Jo [sephine], Agnes, Aloise, Isabelle.